If Ella really keeps her expectations that low, she must have really impressed herself with how far her career has come in just a few short years. Ella Langley is gearing up to both present and perform at the CMA Awards this Wednesday, which will start at 7 p.m. CT on ABC with Lainey Wilson taking over as solo host this year, and she’ll likely be a huge winner come Wednesday. Ella is one of the most-nominated artists this year, tied with Lainey and Megan Moroney with six nods in total. Her song “you look like you love me” (featuring Riley Green), received three separate nominations for Single, Song and Music Video of the Year. Additionally, she is nominated for Female Vocalist and New Artist of the Year. I expect she’ll take home at least a few of those, if not more. And leading up to the big night, Ella is co-hosting Backstage Country with Elaina Smith, and she opened up about how much her life has changed over the last year or two as she has stepped into major country stardom. She says she is “the biggest pessimist in the world,” and she trues to keep her expectations on everything low, because she frequently thinks a song is “gonna crash and burn and everyone’s gonna hate me forever” and that she never sets herself up for disappointment. So when a song like “you look like you love me” blows up the way it has, Ella is pleasantly surprised, because her heart “gets broken easily,” so she can sometimes struggle with letting herself really enjoy the success: “I know I seem tough, but I’m kind of [sensitive]. And I don’t like to get, ‘This means everything to me.’ So my heart gets very broken kind of easily with this job. And so I really do, I set myself up that way, which is a good and bad thing, I guess. You have to let yourself win sometimes.” I think that’s probably something a lot of people can relate to in a certain way, even if you’re not a music superstar like Ella, and she’s talked before about how much she has struggled with her mental health around the time of the ACM Awards earlier this year, even though she won big there too. She says she is “obsessed” with being on the road, and she aways wanted to have a career doing what she does now, though writing “You Look Like You Love Me” as a joke, and having it turn into a mega viral hit, wasn’t exactly what she expected: “It’s just like gradual little things, you know? My life might change now, kind of feeling, I think at the time, it’s still kind of rough in it last year. I mean, really was. I literally am addicted to being on the road and playing shows. I’ve been on the roadmap every weekend since I was 18 years old, minus COVID. I’m obsessed with it. So, to go out and see a song that you kind of wrote as a joke. I literally wrote ‘You Look Like You Love Me’ as a joke, thinking that I was just gonna play it around the bonfire and my dad would probably think it’s funny. And then that song is the thing that changed my life. It’s really cool and it’s refreshing for me as an artist and a songwriter to know that I’m not pigeon-nailed in this one little box of what people expect from me.” I always appreciate Ella’s honesty and transparency about how being a musician isn’t all the glitz and glamour you see online, and just earlier this summer in August, Ella ended up taking almost a month off from touring because she just needed a break. She released her debut studio album Hungover in 2024, and just released a new song co-written and produced by Miranda Lambert called “Choosin’ Texas,” which is one of my favorite songs she has ever put out. I’m sure it will be part if her next project, though nothing has been officially announced yet, but I’m sure we’ll be getting some more new tubes in 2026, if not sooner. Turn it up: “Choosin’ Texas” The post Why Ella Langley Likes To Keep Her Expectations Low In Country Music: “I’m The Biggest Pessimist” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.